I’m not sure where I heard about it, possibly on HGTV or on TreeHugger, but we decided to see what the environmentally friendly corn resin water bottles with built in water filters were all about. They were a bit pricey in relation to your standard water bottle, but we found them for under $7 each. They can be re-used 90 or so times and can be filled with regular tap water which then filters the chlorine and other chemicals out through the carbon filter. If you consider that at $7 a bottle, used 90 times, that makes the cost of each use approximately eight cents! Maybe nine cents when you include the water. Of course, that doesn’t factor in tax and shipping since that will vary, but it’s still going to be much less than buying a bottle of water at (usually) around a dollar each.

There were two main reasons we wanted to try them out. First is the chemicals that I’ve been reading about that can leach from regular water bottles, usually due to sunlight exposure (or heat) I’ve read. Here’s a good article that explains it a little. My employer provides water bottles for us at work, and since they buy them in bulk they are usually sitting in the break room next to the windows in the sunlight. Now knowing that chemicals are most likely leaching into that water, I have a hard time drinking it. That’s why I wanted to try out the corn resin refillable bottle. The other reason I wanted the bottle was because almost everywhere I’ve tasted the tap water in the Los Angeles area, it has had a strong chlorine taste to it. Since these bottles are designed to filter out the chlorine, as well as other chemicals and “organic material”, it only made sense to get one.

If you are inclined to try one out, the best deal I’ve found so far was at Lucky Vitamin. Most places I found that sold the bottles were selling in the $9-$10 range, but at Lucky Vitamin they were below $7 at the time I purchased mine. Let me know if you find them someplace for cheaper.

One other thing to note about the bottles is that they can’t be used like the traditional water bottle. That was something we had to learn the hard way. You can’t squeeze them to get the water out because the caps have vents in them to allow air to replace the water being consumed. It makes sense – if they were designed without the holes then water would be forced through the filter on its way out, then air would be forced into the filter when it tried to return to its original shape again. That would cause the filter to most likely fail quicker than it was intended to. Anyway, just remember it can’t be squeezed, just think of it more as a straw – that’ll help save you from looking like you just drank out of a dribble cup 😉 It doesn’t leak though when the cap is closed, so its safe to transport in a bag or backpack.

We all really like ours, and will probably buy them again when ours have reached their life expectancy. If you try one out, then let us know what you think.